Workbench navigation
Use Stories, Search, Tests, Comments, or MCP activity in the left rail to change the side panel. Selecting its active button again collapses the panel. The collapse button near Settings also opens or closes the panel. Home and Settings keep their existing route navigation.
The rail is 56px wide; expanded panels default to 280px. Drag the panel's outer edge or inspector's inner edge to resize. Focus either separator and use Left/Right arrows, Shift for larger steps, or Home/End for width limits. Widths persist locally and stay bounded to available workspace. The floating inspector defaults to 344px, can be resized or closed, and cannot be moved or pinned.
On containers at most 640px wide, the rail moves to the bottom and panels open over the workspace. Choosing a story dismisses this overlay. Canvas fit and floating tools account for the visible inspector width.
Select (V), Pan (H), and Measure (M) share the canvas toolbar's tool switch; one tool stays active at a time. Pan, Space+drag, or middle mouse pans the canvas. Space+drag and middle mouse temporarily pan while keeping the selected tool. Its shortcut hint stays inside the workspace beside the inspector. With Measure selected, hover a selected preview to inspect its size and spacing. Click to lock that measurement; click again to resume hovering. Changing tool, preview, or runtime clears the lock. Enter or Space also toggles a displayed measurement.
Static builds include Home, Stories, Search, appearance controls, panel collapse, and Settings. Dev-only destinations are omitted. Opening a static book with an old dev pane preference restores Stories.
Press Ctrl/⌘ Shift D to switch light/dark appearance. Ctrl/⌘ K retains the story and command palette. The existing theme.hideColorSchemeSwitch option controls the appearance switch.
Panel and inspector preferences use _histoire-ui-shell. Story URLs and their variantId and tab query parameters remain independent of these local preferences.
Internal shell contracts
Each standalone workbench owns a createShell instance and provides it through provideShell. Components read the narrow useShell contract. Persistence attaches to the caller's own document storage, and close retires observers without disposing its session.
ShellLayout accepts stories, search, tests, comments, mcp, main, inspector, and overlays slots. Optional inspector-header adds a frame-owned header and close button; inspector content that supplies its own header uses only inspector.
Layers use canvas content, toolbar (20), inspector (30), provider popovers (100), then menus and dialogs. Narrow panel backdrop (70), panel (80), and bottom rail (90) stay above the canvas while the panel is open.